Have a baby in your teens and you’re feckless. Have one in your twenties or thirties and you’re a workplace liability. Have one in your early forties – which I did – and you’re plain deluded about your physical and emotional capabilities. Try to pencil it in for your fifties and ha! You left it too late. The fertility ship has already sailed.

At least, that’s been the story up till now. As someone who’s had children at 33, 34 and 40, with friends who had them in their teens and twenties, I’ve never found it particularly convincing.

Occasionally I envy my peers who already have adult children making their way in their world. At other times I feel blessed to have been able to wait until I was less of an immature prat – speaking very much for myself – before embarking on motherhood. At no point have I thought “no, actually, we should all have been doing at the same time, circa 2002”.